februarie 25, 2011

uttermost reach

"Somewhere, during the time of our first readings, there is a moment in which we discover that, from the ink-stains on a page, a world emerges fully-fledged and magically real. This is a transformative experience, after which our relationship to the tangible, quotidian world is no longer the same. After having witnessed the creative capabilities of language that allow words not merely to communicate or label but to bring to life what they label and communicate—that is to say, after we have become readers—there can no longer be for us an innocent perception of the world. Once named, a thing is no longer itself, in the Platonic sense that Borges would later delight in elaborating: the thing is assumed by the word that names it, contaminated or enriched by all the ancestry and connotations and prejudices that the word drags along in its wake."